Sysprof is a sampling processor profiler for Linux that uses a kernel module to profile the entire system, not just a single application. Sysprof handles shared libraries and applications do not need to be recompiled. In fact they don't even have to be restarted. Sysprof is a kernel module that can be easily inserted into the operating system and started. Thus, Sysprof and tools like it have been very useful in Linux development.
Sysprof works by generating stack backtraces for the currently running process at approximately 200 times a second. The backtraces are generated in the kernel and sent to an application which collects and analyzes the backtraces to generate a detailed call graph. The callgraph includes information on how much time the system spent in various functions in the applications running during the profile period.
However, one limitation of Sysprof is that it only works on Intel's x86 family of processors. The x86 limitation comes from the fact that stack traces are difficult to produce on anything other than x86 processors. On all other architectures faulty heuristics or third party libraries must be used to obtain debug information loaded from files. Unfortunately, neither of these solutions provides the profiling capabilities, especially from inside the kernel, as well as Sysprof.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a system profiling tool, like Sysprof, for a variety of architectures. It would also be desirable to provide a way to port a system profiling tool, like Sysprof, to architectures other than x86 processors.